


The More Louche Kind of Buccaneer

by Etnoe



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Humour, Bad Pick-Up Lines, Class Differences, Community: ithurtsmybrain, Crossover Pairings, M/M, Metafiction elements, Pre-Curse of the Black Pearl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24743905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/pseuds/Etnoe
Summary: An orphan boy, the girl who rescued him, and a mad pirate with a loose-limbed walk; all as the story demands ... almost.This story is running loose after an unexpected setback with some witches, and in desperation, it's taken a could-be pirate from entirely the wrong place.
Relationships: Greebo/Will Turner
Kudos: 5





	The More Louche Kind of Buccaneer

**Author's Note:**

> Set after _Witches Abroad_ on the Discworld side. The title is a quote from _Maskerade_.

* * *

  
The fairy godmother had fallen; the servant girl had not married the prince - but the ruined story clung on with the tenacity of a rumour. It lashed around physical and mental landscapes, looking for substance. It had the momentum of a derailed locomotive and no focus at all; it sipped strength from a thousand different points.

_...and there was one point it touched on, a creature that had been part of it, not so long ago, and was full of untold stories. That creature was easy to pluck into the narrative whirlwind._

Now it had curses and apples, scoundrels and seas, revenge and decent men; but one more thing was needed: some good old romance. The potential for a great love could be felt, and with a little push - because a good story is hard to resist - it burst into the right place and time in a shroud of fog, rolling over the ocean and drawing innumerable parallel lines together...

  


*

  
Will reminded himself dutifully that pirates were cruel and wicked and lawless and, and, truthfully ... free. Er. From moments like this, anyway.

He squirmed.

"What happened, Will?" Elizabeth asked compassionately. "You might feel - relieved if you talk about it."

"But I don't want to." Will looked glumly at Elizabeth's face and judged that the compassion was barely hiding the eagerness. She wanted to hear about the pirates.

"Now, Elizabeth, dear," Governor Swann said, "this is hardly suitable dinner conversation. I'm sure the incident was troubling enough for the lad. Why don't you tell us about your piano lessons instead?" (After but a week, Elizabeth had already shared plans with Will on how best to ensure the piano ended up at the bottom of the harbour.)

Will sat in front of a plate of fancy food and felt once removed from the furniture. His fourteenth birthday was soon, and he hoped they'd all forgotten. But Elizabeth's mind _snapped_ onto things like that. The day before last she had slipped this lunch into conversation in a way that made it a complete surprise, even though it was a yearly event to commemorate the day he was saved from the sea.

He toyed with one of his forks as their conversation drifted politely above him, taking tiny bites out of the food like Elizabeth did. Even when the talk drifted to trade and matters of government, Elizabeth kept sharing her opinion, her quick, bright words indulged with smiles by her father and Captain Norrington.

The Captain turned to him, seeming slightly embarrassed to have found Elizabeth's last remark so amusing. "And you, young Mister Turner? I've heard you're doing tolerably well in the forge."

"Yes sir. It's going very well. It's hard work, but I manage."

Governor Swann and Captain Norrington laughed; they thought him just a boy. Will held his breath at how much it hurt. They didn't know how hard it was, working enough to make up for his master's drunken failures. He _wouldn't_ tell them, never.

"Your honesty will take you far, young William," Governor Swann said as he subsided. "You will grow up to be a fine man, I am sure."

"Perhaps, one day, you could even take up a place in the Navy," Captain Norrington said. "I can certainly put in a good word for you on the matter of swordsmanship."

Elizabeth chortled out stifled laughter, and Captain Norrington again looked faintly self-conscious at being in the midst of such good humour.

"Ah..." Governor Swann said delicately, not half as amused. "I thought you had decided his previous lessons were sufficient, Captain?"

Captain Norrington hastily swallowed his sip of wine. "Yes, Governor. Mister Turner has come quite far enough to teach himself, though I have no fear that he's come to realise that it's best not to teach others." This was said with a quick glance at Elizabeth. She laughed again, and a touch of a smile came to the Governor at the sound.

Her hair curled in a golden nest at the bottom of her neck, an inch from the high neck of her new dress. She had showed this dress to Will very eagerly, considering this was Elizabeth, and her dainty shoes and sparkling necklace. Now as she laughed, truthfully enough but in a tiny laugh nothing like her proper one, she looked like a lady. A real Lady.

"Enjoy Foundling's Day, lad," Captain Norrington said as he departed, and Governor Swann tittered at the joke. Will nodded stiffly.

"Thank you for coming, Captain. I owe you much, and I wish to thank you for that too."

Norrington raised his eyebrows, humouring and mocking him. "I appreciate your gratefulness, Mister Turner." He walked easily off, tall and blue, straighter than any of the swords Will had managed to make so far.

"If you'll excuse me, William, Elizabeth," Governor Swann said, and walked after the Captain to give him a proper host's farewell.

"Come on!" Elizabeth said excitedly, and grabbed him by the elbow. They had vanished from the sight of the older men before Will had breath to protest.

"Elizabeth! Really? This ... isn't good!"

" _Not good?_ Oh, a perfect tragedy, then, it must be."

Will knew what he'd meant, but he couldn't bring himself to explain. Elizabeth hadn't yet realised everything that he had. Besides, it wasn't something he could say in words, it was something he just knew. Everyone knew. They talked about the useless orphan whom the richest people on the island almost befriended and who, at special occasions, could afford to make a fuss of him.

Elizabeth dragged him into a small but comfortable room. "No one comes here, so we can talk a while," she announced, perching herself on a chair with satisfaction.

"If no one uses it, won't it be the first place your father will look for us?" Will asked, looking at the door with some hope. Alone in a room with the governor's daughter? He could hear people saying it, the exact intonation.

Elizabeth pulled a face. "Oh well, we'll still have some time. Let's have a chat. My father's a bit upset about our swordfighting lesson, so we might not have many chances for a bit."

Will did as she wanted, sitting down in a dainty armchair, and looked at his very polished shoes all the while.

"Oh, please, Will!" Elizabeth burst out. "You've never said anything _true_ about the pirate thing, it was always stuff to shut the other boys up! _Please_?"

"I was just on a ship," Will said abruptly. He focused forcefully on the tips of his shoes, every scuff mark. "There were lots of normal sailors. Then one day there was a fog, and when it cleared we saw a little island, and there was a man stranded on it. We picked him up. Everyone thought he was a little mad."

"Mad?" The tone of voice let him know how enormous Elizabeth's eyes had gone. Then Will imagined they returned to normal as she asked, "Are you sure you're not making this up?"

"Of course I'm not."

"Go on, then!"

He didn't want to. He wasn't angry anymore, since it was hard to stay angry with Elizabeth. But he talked anyway, because he was letting go of the old guilt. And perhaps he owed this much to Elizabeth, after all.

"He never made any sense. But they kept him on and tricked him so he wouldn't go on land-bound ships we met, because he was strong. He had the biggest muscles--!" Will broke off to illustrate melon bulges on his skimpy arms. "And he moved strangely, almost like he slid as he walked, but he'd leap up the rigging quick as anything."

"Was he a pirate?" Elizabeth breathed.

Will paused fractionally. Then he replied, "Well, er..." and scratched his head in embarrassment.

"'Er'?" Elizabeth said archly. 

"Neverfoundout!" Will couldn't say the rest ... it was too embarrassing to speak of at all, never mind to Elizabeth Swann. A pirate who despised the sea? A six-foot man with claws who listened to a three-foot urchin brandishing a slipper? So he told her the end of it.

"He knocked over a lamp! And everything aboard burned so that the others abandoned ship. And you found us."

"That's IT? Well I would have made something up too!" Elizabeth slumped back into the comforting arms of the couch.

Will had not thought about this for a long time. Not minding Elizabeth much as the memories crowded, he imagined how the conversation could have gone if he dared to tell anyone the whole story.

_He knocked over a lamp._

_How?_

_With his tail._

"Is that it? Is that all?" She practically begged, so badly wanting something interesting and fascinating.

In the face of this passion turned on him, Will blushed badly and turned his face down again. The rug here was pretty. "He was one-eyed, and he had an eye-patch! He liked parrots, but, um, to eat. And ... and ... Well. He liked to fight. He was always fighting. And he charmed all the ladies, everyone said, and he had a name for me, and--"

"What was it?" Looking up again was a mistake - Elizabeth had gone back to making her eyes big, full of pleading. She must have realised that her Will Turner had been practically adopted by a man who was probably a pirate. He hadn't meant to say that.

"Go on, Will, please do. Oh please—"

"Stray. He called me Stray. He said he knew what it felt like. And he did. Know it, truly."

She stared at him in an extraordinary manner, and Will met the look with no urge to duck away. Perhaps now she would know what he knew.

"Elizabeth! Mister Turner!" Governor Swann stood in the doorway. He ushered them out with magnificent fuddy-duddy efficiency.

"There your are ... come now, move out ... Elizabeth, must you entertain guests in such an out of the way room? You'll be late for your lesson. Run along and don't give Miss Adams trouble! Good day, Mister Turner ... happy 'Foundling's Day'... And I believe your birthday is soon? Well, you are growing to be a fine young man, and I hope you enjoy your birthday very much in that happy knowledge. Your parents would have been proud."

Will wasn't surprised. This dismissal, warm and polite, was part of what he _knew_.

  


*

  
The glowing forge made twilight in the smithy; Mister Brown's snores were petering out upstairs to something hardly noticeable. Will decided he was too comfortable, a blanket around his legs as he reclined on his pallet, to bother to go to his room. He'd bought the pallet cheap long ago and set it in the far corner from the door, for the late nights of hammering something into a perfect shape. He was getting to where he thought his pride in his work was justified.

Tonight, he had left the tools to cool even before Mister Brown had staggered back from the inn; he didn't want to work. He hoped that didn't make him lazy, but there it was. He felt satisfied at this vague bit of rebellion.

It matched the bit of anger and sadness left from his earlier surge of bitterness. Today was Foundling's Day, of his sixteenth year, and at last, there had been nothing done about it. The last two years, they'd had the lunch, but this time his birthday had brought a card rather than a whole affair with a present and a picnic. Today he had become the kind of man he was meant to be - unworthy.

He lay back, thinking. He remembered how Elizabeth had always been his friend. She had picked him from the sea, more than anyone. The fog that day, it was like tonight's. Thick as him, as Mrs Islington the greengrocer's wife had cackled.

He should have his life without imposing it on Elizabeth so much. Her father had probably told her something like that already. He'd always be polite and grateful and loving of her, but he really couldn't treat her so familiarly. Everyone had talked of it, and it had duly made Everyone attach all too much meaning to times when he simply showed the honest pride that his mother had taught him, from combing his hair (almost) every morning to polishing his boots.

This morning he'd polished them bright, in case Elizabeth was trying to surprise him - but no such luck. Maybe she'd already understood, a bit, after that conversation about those strange days with that strange pirate, he mused. Who had a fright because water splashed on him, and an appearing-disappearing tail, imagine...

The door was flung open in a whirl of wind and fog, met by an enthusiastic flare of fire from the embers in the forge. A tall figure stood there, a silhouette blacker than the night it slid from.

It _hissed_.

It hissed, " _Wet!_ "

Will dropped the sword he clenched in his hand. "Greebo!"

The man slammed the door shut as fiercely as he'd opened it. He spun around, his face a spiteful frame for needle-sharp teeth - and then his tensed muscles melted into bliss and a lope that took him across the smithy in two strides. At the fireside, he gracefully collapsed.

Will knew the town cats had an uncanny way of finding their way to the warm forge. Nonetheless he gaped, feeling as if he must be imagining this.

"But--where--"

Greebo lifted his head petulantly, and said with pronunciation that sounded well-practised, "What's someone like you doing in a place like this?" Then he flopped his head back down onto his hand and stared as if he were waiting.

Something struck. Or, well, it must have done, because Will was suddenly twice stunned. He would have protested and questioned, but he couldn't! This was--! Wait - this was _beautiful_?

Greebo didn't look a day older ... he'd always been like this ... the muscles, the black leather clothes; the thrillng danger hinted at by the scar showing from underneath the eye patch; the healthy eye an ecstatic, lazy slit of bright green...

Will sat down suddenly.

He remembered. All the women on those raided ships had run away just fast enough to give Greebo a distraction. And he'd said sometimes, "Stray, I'm teaching you this: Do what you wish." And his voice had been like a purr.

Wait, that's right! "Greebo! You're a pirate!" Will said sternly. Secretly he was still utterly confounded, but bullheadedness kept him on track, as well as the innate feeling that a firm bearing would help him feel like he'd tried, even if chances were great he'd be elegantly ignored.

But Greebo was smiling lazily at him. "Nnnot..." he mewled.

Will wanted to sit down more than he was already sitting down. He forged ahead. "You were a pirate when we met. Have ... have you changed your ways and ... and turned to a path of being a proper citizen?"

" _Not_ a pirate," Greebo said. Will recalled that years ago, he'd said the same thing in a sulky tone while standing on the deck of a raided ship where no one dared to move, because all six foot of him gleefully leapt on anyone that did.

"But where did you come from?" Will asked him. "Did you come to find me?"

"Yes, Stray. I'm also a stray, remember?" Greebo looked at him hopefully.

"Ah ... yes." He must have nowhere else to go. Will wasn't one for useless sympathy, but tonight ... and he knew Greebo, anyway; a thwack with a shoe settled him down.

"You can stay, if you want," he said.

Greebo made an asthmatic sound, with a sort of round, ragged - purry - edge to it. He looked disgruntled and stopped. And said, "I want." And looked at Will.

No ... _looked_. He really, very much...

Will put his sword aside. "Do you come here often?" he asked, and was completely befuddled by where the question came from. "I- I mean, Port Royal. I thought Captain Norrington put a stop to all the pira- to ... exceptionally free men like you coming here."

"Came," Greebo said, "because of my idea. Story took me to island. And went crazy!" he spat. "Strange story, don't understand. Stray fell in story too. Like Ella. Stray has to marry prince ..." he looked at Will in consideration, and added, "esssss."

"Ah..." You were supposed to humour madmen, right?

"Story won't let go, and Greebo wants to go home. Want to be Greebo. So Greebo must make like Nanny ... change story. And ... Stray prrrretty. Strayed like me." He smiled at Will, and even the danger of those needle teeth made you think nothing more than that the itch was worth it for the feeling of the scratch.

"Now, guest want ... milk?"

Somehow, Will was disappointed by that ending. Still, he hurried to get the milk, and remembered enough to put it in a saucer. At ten, it had been funny. Now ... flick, flick, flick, went Greebo's tongue...

The disappointment melted. Will kept remembering the women on the ships Greebo had raided. They had seemed very brave to him because they were calm for people in a pirate raid, although he'd sometimes worried that the gigglier ones might get properly hysterical. Once Greebo had got bored with fighting the men, the women never bothered much with trying to fight on, and Will and the rest of their crew had always had time to take milk and blankets and feathery things, and whatever Greebo didn't care for.

Back then, he'd thought Greebo was strange and rather amazing - if not a good man - for the way he'd done what he wanted and got what he wanted, no matter the challenges him. Now ... flick, flick ... strange and amazing...

Will felt as if something black and dangerous was slinking through the air, turning it hazy and warm.

"Is it just me, or is it hot in here?" he theorised haphazardly, once again unsure of where the words came from, and took off his shirt.

Flick ... slick ... lick...

Greebo's eye was resting on him, and though Will couldn't see his mouth, anyone could have told the way he was grinning (most of the women down both sides of the street, for example). The black aura moved like diabolical liquid, rippling, pulsing, ebb and flow that pulled your blood along.

As Greebo stood, it was clear that it came from him. He owned it, he was it...

"Play, kitten?" he hissed.

"I ... I'll go get cards if you don't have."

"Come _here_ , kitten. I'll teach you everythinnnng."

Cats are wonderful at looking as if they really do know everything.

And as Greebo approached, finally agreeing with Will that it was terribly hot in the smithy, the narrative viewpoint slid slowly, inevitably to the warmly flickering fire.

  


*

  
"No chance I'm placating the natives with 'harmless old lady' rubbish. Mucking about with spades-thyme, or whatever young Esk said, is not something that requires me to say 'lawks'. Now let's LEAVE. This tangled up story is about as messy as life is naturally - it can sort itself!"

"Oh, Mummy's darling! You did it! You stopped the story! Now come back to Mummy, Greebo sweetie!"

Will finally managed to unglue his eyes and jumped up to reopen the still-shuddering door. He glared both ways down the street, ferocious, and, he realised belatedly, stark naked.

There was no chance to see anything. It was a terrible fog. 

  


*

  
When he was ten, he had been a pirate, for something just more than two weeks. Then he had been taken to a debauched place called Port Royal, where he'd discovered the truth of what pirates. He had known it was wrong when he was doing it, but he had been a small, impressed boy, and in watching the strong, honorouble men who stopped the terrible things and changed the town, he learnt better.

Now he knew it was wrong. He would be the best person he could to make up for it, even if he was supposed to be low. He'd be as proud and tall as anyone, and do well, and mind what people said. He must know a bit about what was really right himself, after years of growing...

He did know.

(Quietly, not even to himself quite, he thought smugly that he knew **everything**.)

Will Turner was going to be what he had decided to be. He was becoming a man, and he would be a good man.

He would also, luckily for the challenges life would bring him, always believe in magic.

But perhaps not - quite - in sway-hipped pirates.


End file.
